Chapter Text
He awoke with the coppery taste of blood in his mouth. With the brush of his fingers, he found no wound on his face, only the rough scratch of a growing beard. The scruff above his lips, across his chin, and cheeks felt unfamiliar. But he could not remember why.
He could not remember anything at all.
Jolting up, he found himself surrounded by makeshift tents, sputtering fireplaces, and a few skittish horses tied to trees. But no people. Strangely, they had left their clothes behind, while he wore none at all—except in his hand, he found a drawstring pouch with a small metal sigil attached. The etching was of a kingfisher, he realized.
Why did he remember the name of a bird, but not his own?
He reached for the closest dark tunic strewn on the ground and immediately regretted it. For beneath the tunic, he found the splintered remains of a long bone and a small pool of blood.
Horror crept through him as he searched through the camp and found similar remnants of bones and blood. The people had not abandoned the camp. Something had devoured them, leaving traces of at least a hundred unfortunate victims, judging by the clothing and number of tents.
He was the only survivor.
Past the treeline in the distance, he saw massive billows of smoke rising into the sky.
Behind him, the sea reflected the red and orange streaks of the setting sun. Blood red. He shuddered.
It took time to pick through the clothes before he found pieces suitable and not flecked with blood. He picked out a sword amongst the few weapons that had been of no help to the dead. He could only hope to fare better, but surely that meant putting distance between himself and the campsite turned graveyard. He noted the wagon tracks indicated the company had been heading towards the sea before they met their fate. Not that he saw any port along the coast, or any sign of civilization for that matter.
The plumes of smoke had only grown in number beyond the trees, where massive mountains reached towards the sky, so he turned towards the sea. He hung the sigil from his neck, wishing it would help him remember who he was and what had happened at the campsite.
Kingfishers were river birds, he knew somehow. Perhaps, he should follow the shoreline until he found an estuary that would bring him back inland.
Night closed in around him with cold winds blowing across the water. The sun had nearly sunk into the sea. The last vibrant rays reflected from the horizon to the shore.
Then he saw something moving in the water. Towards him. Sea monster was his first instinct, perhaps the very creature that had massacred his companions was returning for a second course.
No, the figure was small, clad in white. Swimming to shore. He could hardly believe his eyes. How could someone survive out in the frigid waters for long? He had not seen a single ship on the horizon since turning towards the sea.
With the crest of a wave, the castaway crashed onto the sandy shore. His hand went for the pommel of his sword, an instinct he did not know he had until now. But then the wave receded, and he saw her.
A lone soul, gasping, struggling to push to her feet. The next wave crashed over her, dragging her back out to the sea. Whatever divine strength she had channeled to make it to shore seemed to fail her moments from safety.
Without another thought, he shed his cloak and sword and ran into the water. He did not understand why, but he could not allow such a resilient spirit to cease to exist, not after all of her effort to survive.
For several frantic moments, he could not see her. Then her hair, floating at the surface, reflected the last golden glint of the setting sun, right before she started to sink, fast as a rock. He dove through another wave and reached down for her. Hooking an arm under her, pulling her body against his, he worked with the waves to swim back to shore until a large wave slammed them both against the sand.
His ears ringing from the impact, he clung to her, afraid the water would pull her back into its depths yet again. But he found the strength to stand, to pull her further from the shore where the waves could no longer reach them.
He collapsed with her in his arms. Dread fell over him as he realized her chest did not rise and fall. He pressed on her chest with a strong hand, and water gurgled out of her mouth, but still she did not breathe. After several more attempts to push the water from her lungs, she lay still as ever.
Bending down, he pinched her nose and covered her mouth with his. Then breathed for her.
After what felt like an eternity, she suddenly sprang to life, coughing and sputtering until she sank back down from exhaustion.
“You’re safe,” he muttered, breathing a sigh of relief as her eyes fluttered open. Eyes blue and vast as the ocean she had come from.
She gasped for air, frowning up at him. Then her hand moved faster than a kingfisher diving for dinner, and he felt the sharp edge of metal pressing at his throat.
He froze, regretting he had ignored his instinct to keep his sword in hand. “Remove your hand from me,” she snarled.
Stranger she was, her ingratitude chafed at him like sandpaper. He pulled his arm from across her waist with a huff. As she rolled off and away from his lap, he pushed to his feet so his knees went into her back, sending her unceremoniously tumbling into the sand.
She gasped and bounced back on her feet more deftly than he expected, swinging her dagger through the air.
He put up his hands in surrender, taking a step back in the direction where his sword lay in the sand. “You threaten everyone who risks their neck for you?” He accused with a glare.
That seemed to give her pause. She stared at him, then out at the sea. “You pulled me from the waves?” She asked, lowering her blade.
“No, I’m soaked to the bone because I thought it was the perfect time for an evening swim in freezing waters,” he did not hold back his ire. "How are you even alive?"
“I have survived colder,” she boasted, glancing around to take in her surroundings. As she turned her head, he finally noticed the point of her ear peaking through the wet strands of her hair.
Still, he remained impressed that she managed to keep her feet under herself. Something more than elven endurance gave her the strength to reach land. Some determination gave her purpose, and he could only wonder what for.
A blistering wind blew down from the north, and she visibly shivered in the thin, wet shift that clung to her every curve. He could not help but smirk. “Your pride won’t warm you against the chill of night.”
She sighed, surveying him with a scrutinous gaze.
He turned from her to retrieve his belongings, not caring to be subjected to her judgment. He had wasted time putting more space between himself and the monster. He could only hope it already had its fill of the dead, but he wasn’t keen on the smoke-filled skies beyond the far side of the camp either.
After securing his sword at his side, he wrapped the cloak around his shivering body. The fur lining offered some warmth, but he detested the feeling of wet, sandy clothes clinging to his body.
“Why are you out here all alone?” She asked.
A short, dry laugh left his lips. “Why were you out at sea? Swam all the way from… from—“ His mind faltered. What was it that lay across the sea?
“Valinor,” she finished for him after an uncomfortable silence, “or as you may know it, the Undying Lands. No, I did not. Not quite all the way.”
He glanced over to find her watching him with concern. The cloudy, unnerving gaps in his mind left him feeling vulnerable. He did not like that feeling at all.
“You didn’t answer the question,” he said, moving the conversation along.
“Neither did you,” she countered.
Another cold wind whipped through them, and he shuddered despite the cloak.
“It will be warmer inland, away from the sea,” she offered, glancing at him one more time before making her way.
Well, that was a considerable improvement over her nearly stabbing him.
Wary as he was to head back inland, she had turned northeast away enough from danger, and perhaps it had not been wise to be out in the open by himself. There was strength in numbers—if the other half of that strength did not turn on him again.
He followed at a distance well wide of her hand that tightly gripped her dagger. The metal of her weapon occasionally caught the moonlight and flickered like the stars above, as did her long tresses, somehow golden and silver at once.
When they reached the treeline, he watched with curiosity as she examined various trunks until she stopped at one. With her blade, she cleaved a large, grey growth from the tree. Some sort of fungus, round and layered, that almost resembled a horse’s hoof.
Then she went for another. It was not until she began collecting small sticks that he realized her intention.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he warned.
She looked over her shoulder, frowning at him. “The trees do not mind if we take what has already fallen,” she assured him.
He chuckled with confused amusement at her strange reverence for the trees. “No, elf, I mean a fire,” he replied, ignoring her glare. “We don’t want to attract trouble.”
She scoffed, as if she believed herself greater than whatever danger may close in. “I will manage, but you could freeze to death in this wind, in those wet clothes,” she replied, reaching for another thin branch on the ground.
“Better than getting eaten alive,” he replied.
Her head turned sharply, a fire lit within her enraptured eyes, as if he had just told her where to find buried treasure she had been searching for her whole life.
“What do you run from? Wargs?”
What a strange word. “I did not see the beasts,” he admitted carefully. “But they left behind little more than bone splinters and blood drops of… my companions.” He did not grieve for the people he could not remember, but sorrow tightened his chest at the needless suffering. It should not be this way.
“You did not see them?” She asked, rounding on him now. She barely came up to his chest, but her intensity compelled him to take a step back. “They blended with the night? Where was this?”
He gritted his teeth. “Between the sea and the burning forest,” he answered, for it was all he knew.
She frowned but retreated, exhaling whatever questions she might have pelted him with next. “Wargs will shy from fire,” she eventually said, as if the matter of building one was settled.
Again, he weighed her company against striking back out on his own. She seemed to know something of the beasts that roamed these lands, while he came back empty every time he reached for specified knowledge within his mind. He could always take his leave come dawn.
The elf began building the fire with practiced ease, as if she had done it a hundred times before. She made a circle of fallen logs to break the wind, and in little time, she found rocks to spark the tree fungus alight.
But the wind blew through the trees, and the logs were not enough to protect the budding fire. She scrunched her nose and set her jaw before starting again. That was when he noticed how she wavered on her feet, how she blinked her eyes again and again to stave off the exhaustion threatening to overtake her. And she tried to hide it, but there was the subtlest chattering of her teeth whenever she lost her focus.
She had been in the frigid water a long time.
Still, she managed to get a second fire going. He contributed to the growing pile of dry sticks and twigs, even branches, to feed the blaze, not sitting near the blooming warmth until she did first, perching on one of the logs.
“You needn’t keep your distance,” he said, sitting in front of a log to be closer to the fire. “Just admit you’re cold too, elf.”
“Stop calling me that,” she said.
“Fine, then, what are you called?” He asked.
She gave him a long look before replying. “Galadriel. And you?”
He had expected some name, any name, to come to his mind. Nothing did.
“I… don’t remember,” he admitted, shaking his head as if to clear the cobwebs inside his mind.
She was looking at him again with worry. Or worse, pity.
He despised that. “Look, I woke up and can’t remember my name or where I’m from or how I got here. It will come back to me soon, I’m sure,” he said with a huff.
She did not laugh or question if he was lying.
When he dared to look her way again, her expression had softened. She slid down the log in an impossibly graceful way, a little closer to the fire, a little closer to him. “By the sound of your accent, you’re from the Southlands. On the other side of the mountains, there are many scattered tribes of men.”
Men. The Southlands. Her words did not bring any memories to the surface, but with nothing else to go by, he accepted it. Only then did he reach for his ears, finding them round at the top, unlike her own.
“You know where we are?” He asked, curious how she could emerge from the sea that seemed to stretch endlessly and tell one shore from the other.
She hummed. “Well enough, I can offer you guidance come daybreak.”
There it was. She had repaid his aid with some warmth and would send him on his way. It would be for the better, not worrying about making one wrong move and finding her blade in his neck.
“Although,” she seemed to be rethinking her offer. “My people may be able to help with your memories. If they do not return on their own.”
He did not think she made the offer lightly. “That’s where you’re headed?”
“No,” she breathed out.
He sighed and shrugged. “No matter. After what I awoke to, not sure I want to remember anything,” the words slipped out against his will, but he found that he meant them.
A shadow of sorrow passed over her face. “I grieve for you, for those you lost,” she lamented, her compassion almost tangible as her words settled on him.
“What does an elf know of grief?” He countered, harsher than he intended. For some reason, he had a sense they lived forever.
She did not seem to take offense. “The Undying Lands are misnamed,” she explained. “Many elves died there, many of my kin, including my grandfather. Though we did fare worse coming here. I have since lost almost everyone else.”
“I am sorry,” he replied, sorrow closing in on him again. He pulled the fur cloak more tightly around himself. Was that all there was to this world? Endless suffering, loss, death?
“It was a long age ago,” she said wistfully, her eyes reflecting the dance of the fire’s flames as she stared into them. Then her eyes flickered up to meet his own.
The weight of her gaze was too much. He looked down at the fire, and that was when she finally spoke again.
“Thank you… for saving my life,” the words fell from her lips like an apology and gratitude in one.
When he glanced up, she still gazed at him, but her pity was gone. For a moment, he felt as if she truly saw him and shared in his sorrow. They were two souls adrift, neither knowledge nor lack of it could anchor them to peace.
“Well, that wasn’t so terrible, was it?” He could not let the opportunity to provoke her pass him by, and his jab quickly cut through the tension.
She tried to scowl, but he did not miss how the corner of her pink lips turned up for a fleeting moment.
Then a blistering wind crashed through the trees, collapsing the small fire into smoldering embers that flew into the air. A large cluster of embers caught a low-hanging branch and immediately started to smoke and flicker.
Her eyes went wide as she gasped, jumping to her feet. The elf smothered the budding fire with her bare hands before it could consume beyond the branch. He wondered if he should help, but it had happened so fast. Why had he not thought to grab any water before leaving the camp behind?
After glancing at her hands with a grimace, the elf kneeled back down by the fire, her shoulders slumped. She stared at the glowing cinders. For a moment, he feared she would collapse. More bitter winds came, and he shivered as he watched her do the same. His wet clothes burned like ice with every wind gust.
With a frustrated grunt, she moved, sweeping dirt over the fire with her hand, diminishing the embers further. Probably to keep the trees she cared for so much safe.
“This wind is unnatural. We should keep moving to stay warm,” she said, pushing to her feet. “There may be shelter a few hours north if we—“
“A few hours?” He asked, incredulous. “I’m quite sure you’ll collapse before you’re even halfway,” he dared with a pointed look.
“You do not know me nor what I can handle,” she argued.
He rolled his eyes at her stubbornness. Even the cloak was not enough comfort against the chill. He admitted to himself how desperately he desired warmth—and then suddenly, he felt it, bursting in his chest and spreading out through his body, to the ends of his fingers and toes.
"What is it?" The elf asked. He realized he had been looking down at himself, caught off guard by the sudden heat. Perhaps it was the cloak, imbued by its maker with properties that offered such warmth.
“Al’right, elf—“ He stood, pulled off his cloak.
“Galadriel,” she corrected.
“Galadriel, hew this in half with your dagger,” he passed the furs into her hands, then pulled his tunic up over his head.
She stared at him as if he were mad, until he pushed off his trousers. She turned her head with a gasp.
He chuckled, pleased to have thrown her off guard. “What? Never seen a man before?”
“What are you doing?” She asked with astonishment, watching him again, her eyes carefully on his face.
“As you said, I’ll freeze in those wet clothes. Now, the cloak,” he encouraged her.
After observing the cloak in her arms for a long moment, she sighed and passed it back to him. “I will not ruin your only protection against exposure. But we could share our warmth for the remainder of the night,” she suggested.
After her little mortified fit when he undressed, her offer was the last thing he expected. But he was not going to refuse her. He pulled the cloak back around himself and settled against one of the larger logs, his sword beside him.
She turned away to shed her shift, under which she wore no more than white undergarments. He openly admired the way her hair cascaded down her back, her lithe limbs, and the curve of her hips. Her skin was so pale she glowed in the moonlight, somehow spared any tan from the sun even after a long time at sea. She looked like a goddess fallen from the stars above.
After laying her shift to dry across two logs, she approached him, dagger in hand. He extended one arm out, the edge of the fur cloak in hand.
Her gaze caught on his chest as she lowered herself to sit beside him. “Do you remember what that heraldry is?”
He realized she was looking at the pouch hanging from his neck. “It was in my hand when I awoke.”
For all her shivering, he did not expect the immediate warmth her body offered his as she settled into his side. She drew her knees to her chest with one arm. Looking at him over her shoulder, she glanced at the pouch again. As she studied the sigil, he studied her face, so close that even in the low light of the night, he noticed her skin was not unblemished after all. Faint freckles across her face told of her days out at sea without shade. Her cheeks were tinged pink, her lips parched.
For all her sharpness and conceit, the more he saw her vulnerabilities, the more in awe he was at her survival.
“You are royalty. Nobility, at least,” she suggested, glancing up to meet his gaze. Her blue eyes reflected the shining stars above.
“Unless I stole it,” he quipped, looking away, even as he pulled her closer to cover them both with the cloak best he could.
He did not feel an attachment to the pouch, but it had to have been in his hand for an important reason.
She rested her head on her shoulder, eyes ahead on the trees. “Or you are the lost heir to the Southlands who can reunite a people long broken.”
“Funny, elf,” He replied with a laugh. He could not have heard her correctly. What a wild, absurd claim to make based on a small piece of metal.
“Many of these people’s ancestors once served the Dark Lord.” There was no jest in her voice. “Defeated he was, his servant Sauron waits in the shadows to stoke fear and discord, to bind generation after generation to his will. But I believe light will yet endure. Even a whisper of hope could turn the tides of fate for Middle-earth and all its people."
He did not fully understand why, but her words called to something deep inside him. He could do with some hope himself. The fear she spoke of, he had felt it when he woke, still felt it prickling at the dark spaces in his mind.
"Is that what you swam across the ocean for? A whisper of hope?"
The elf did not answer. With a glance, he realized she had fallen asleep.
So deeply asleep, her grip on her dagger had loosened. He would think her dead if not for the soft sound of her inhaling and exhaling, the subtle expansion of her chest with each breath. He shifted her closer against him, for his own benefit, to rest his head on hers. Yet he did not feel a lick of exhaustion.
That was fortunate. He could keep watch. With the fire mostly out, his sight had adjusted to the dark remarkably well.
Moonlight bathed the tall trees that reached for the sky above. Insects hummed. He watched small creatures dart across the leaf-strewn ground, chittering. Their presence was a comfort. If the wargs were nearby, surely the other animals would go quiet.
The greatest comfort, though, he could not deny, was the elf tucked into his side. She was smaller than he would expect of an elf, but the solid weight of her sleeping form grounded him.
While he was not sure she could have resisted sleep much longer, no matter how strong her will, he felt immense satisfaction that she had surrendered to his protection.
Perhaps he was this lost heir she spoke of, and he was destined to protect so much more. He wanted to believe her.
But how had he alone survived the attack on the camp? Why had he not been able to protect the others?
Had he even tried?
And why did he not remember who he was?
He pulled the pouch off around his neck, placed it on the ground, and let go. No sense of loss overcame him. But he could not go by the touch of a simple token with his mind in its current state. He knew nothing, knew no one but the elf by his side.
She slept deeply for a time, and he wondered again how she survived the sea. He could not help but wonder whether she had been sent to him. For him. By whatever powers ruled this world. Or was it only chaos that moved the waters and wind? That tumbled her onto his path?
Before the sun rose, her breathing quickened. Her brows furrowed. Despite the warmth flowing between them, she suddenly shivered as if ice had wrapped around her. Then he felt it spreading to him, unbearable cold stealing his breath.
A wave crashed, pulled him under. He tried to surface, but he only gulped in salty water before being pulled under again. And again and again by stormy waters. When he finally inhaled some air, he vomited sea-water and bile. A floating, broken piece of wood appeared. He grabbed for it—and it transformed into ice.
His grip slipped from the cold ledge. He hit the frozen ground below so hard all the oxygen fled his lungs. Artanis! A frightened voice called through the blistering winds.
He struggled to his feet, but the world changed again, green and rocky and rumbling. The ground threatened to fall apart, water rushing and exploding where it should not. A sense of doom closed around his throat.
Then all the world went dark. Something inside him broke apart, grief and rage pouring out. While the others reached for torches to light, he reached for a blade.
Light exploded in his vision. It hurt his eyes. The blade was being pulled from his grasp, taken against his will.
All around him, figures in white moved their lips to a song he could not hear. Why could he not hear it? Could not hear anything but the call of his blade that had been discarded.
He turned from the light.
And jumped.
Galadriel woke with a start, her hand finding the dagger that had slipped from her fingers without even looking down.
“Galadriel,” he spoke softly, hoping to avoid her blade finding purchase in the flesh of his neck. “You’re safe," he promised, even as his own heart hammered in his chest. Her dreams. No, her nightmares slowly loosened their grip on his mind.
He dug his fingers into the dirt beneath them to feel what was real, assure himself what was not.
One thing he knew for sure, his companion was a being of great power.
She glanced up at him. Her cheeks flushed red. She pushed to her feet, his arm and the cloak falling from her bare shoulders.
He missed her closeness immediately, wondered if there was anyone out in the world missing his warmth. Or were they nothing but bone splinters back at the camp?
“I will keep watch while you sleep." Pulling her shift from the logs, she stated it as an order, as if he had no choice but to comply.
"I am not tired. We can take advantage of the light and move along. What’s our heading?" He pushed to his feet.
"You tell me. Which way back to your camp?"
He sighed, moving for his clothes. The sun had not been in the sky long enough to dry them, but the wind had mercifully abated. “We are not going anywhere near that death trap.”
She frowned at him. “If there are wargs, there may be orcs. If there are orcs, then Sauron himself may be nearby. You will take me to your camp."
After the risk he took for her survival, he found he cared that she continued to live, but if she wanted to throw her life away, he was not going to hang around to watch.
“I think I’ve helped you quite enough. If you’ve got a death wish, you’re on your own from here.” He reached for his sword.
“Death is what will spread if we do nothing. If we run from danger, it will remain unchecked. Do not think you can elude it forever," she warned him.
"And what exactly do you think I can do about it, elf? I’ve got a sword and a sigil, but no memory of these lands or people. No idea if I could even wield it against an enemy." But when he swung the sword through the air, he knew it was not true. The sword felt right in his hand, like he had held one all his life.
"That sigil around your neck may be the very hope these people need to stand up and fight against the evil that once held their ancestors by the throat. You would abandon them when they need you most?"
He tried not to be pulled in by her imploring gaze. "I think you’re putting far too much on this scrap of metal, and far too much on a man who would simply prefer to survive another night not in the bowels of a beast."
"You jumped in the sea to save one life, but will refuse the call to save your own kingdom?"
"I am not the man you believe me to be. I don’t even know my name, elf, let it lie!"
"I have pursued this foe since before the first sunrise bloodied the sky." Her chest heaved with fury. "Letting it lie is not an option.”
"Sounds more like vengeance than justice," he challenged her. "You want to spill blood, that’s your business. I’ll point you towards the camp, but you’re not dragging me along. I don’t want a kingdom. I don’t want war. All I desire is peace. Find someone else to crown."
He pressed the pouch into her hands.
"Now, you promised come dawn to offer me a lay of the land. Would you be so kind as to point me towards civilization?”
She stared down at the pouch in her hands, eyes narrowed. Then she took in a breath, closed her eyes, and exhaled.
Opening her eyes, she looked at him with the same scrutinous gaze as the night before.
“Halbrand,” she said, extending her arm to give the pouch back to him.
He did not put out a hand to take it. “What?”
“You are tall and of noble blood. Halbrand, a name suitable for a King,” she said, entirely too serious.
He frowned. “I don’t need a name. I’m sure I’ll remember mine soon enough.”
She huffed. “Well, call yourself what you like. I am only trying to help.”
“You can’t just give someone a name,” he laughed, something softening in his chest.
“It is called an epessë, an honorific bestowed with respect,” she explained. “Many elves take a given epessë as their name, holding them dearer than the first names they receive from their fathers and mothers.”
“Galadriel… who gave you your name?”
She hesitated. He could see it in her eyes, how she went far away to another time and place. “Someone who is long gone,” she replied.
“You seek your enemy because you believe you have nothing, no one left to lose?” He asked.
“No,” she answered, passion flaring in her eyes. “On the contrary, while my people, whom I love dearly, pretend the darkness is gone, I see how much yet we could still lose. Not only my people, but all the free peoples of Middle-earth. I will not see these lands lost to the shadow.”
He sighed. "From what I saw, the Southlands are already lost. Best we retreat somewhere safe, live to fight another day."
She huffed at that, pressed the sigil back into his hands. “If you will not fight for your people, I shall. If you will not lead me to your camp, I will find it on my own,” she declared. Then, with nothing but her dagger, she turned back towards the sea.
While he could not name a single friend or foe, he was certain he had never before in his life met such an infuriating, stubborn, reckless storm of a spirit.
If she refused to listen to his sense, that was on her. He should turn away, go in any other direction—
But he could not. He could not look away as she moved through the trees with unbending resolve.
The ferocity of her convictions tugged at him, as if they had been tethered together ever since he pulled her from the sea.
He wanted to follow her, to whatever disastrous end lay at the end of her hunt. King or not, she was right. He did not want to be ruled by the fear gnawing at his mind. The way she spoke of a world free of darkness, he desired the same. Could he not raise his sword and fight for such a world?
If she believed it possible, then it had to be.
With a sigh, he secured the pouch around his neck and went after the elf.